The Forefront of Chromatographic Separations

On-board Water Quality Monitoring Tools for the International Space Program

The Porter Group’s research aims at innovations central to the discovery and rapid
screening of promising therapeutic compounds, nanomaterials, biomaterials, and biocatalysts.
By creating high-throughput methods and miniaturizing analytical instrumentation,
they are examining issues related, for example, to:

micro- and nano- electronic and magnetic devices,

biosignatures for health and security,

chip-scale diagnostic platforms, and

chemical interaction databases.

These areas implicitly embody the ability to gain control over the chemistry and physics
of liquid-solid interfaces. In research an array of innovations are used in FTIR,
STM, AFM, Raman spectroscopy, electrochemistry, fluorescence microscopy, acoustic
wave techniques, and spectroelectrochemistry as ultra-sensitive tools for probing
these relationships. Design, synthesis, and modification of nanomaterials; plasmonics
and spintronics in biotechnology; and advanced separation techniques are focuses of
Dr. Porter’s investigations. His research interests span the role of interfaces in
analytical chemistry, including electrochemically modulated liquid chromatography,
electrocatalysis, organic monolayer films, chemically modified surfaces, scanning
probe microscopies, infrared and Raman spectroscopies, and acoustic wave sensors.
Ongoing interests also include miniaturized pumps for chip-scale fluidics and high
throughput systems for the rapid, low-level pathogen enumeration.